The timeout is not for the freeze operation - the timeout is
only set up once the freeze is complete. i.e:
$ time sudo ~/test_src/xfs_io -f -x -c 'gfreeze 10' /mnt/scratch/test
freezing with level = 10
real 0m23.204s
user 0m0.008s
sys 0m0.012s
The freeze takes 23s, and then the 10s timeout is started. So
this timeout does not protect against freeze_bdev() hangs at all.
All it does is introduce silent unfreezing of the block device that
can not be synchronised with the application that is operating
on the frozen device.

Exactly my timeout feature is only for an application, not for freeze_bdev().
I think it is needed for the situation we can't unfreeze from userspace.
(e.g. Freezing the root filesystem)

FWIW, resetting this timeout from userspace is unreliable - there's
no guarantee that under load your userspace process will get to run
again inside the timeout to reset it, hence leaving you with a
unfrozen filesystem when you really want it frozen...

The timeout period specified to the reset ioctl should be much larger than
the interval for calling the reset ioctl repeatedly.
(e.g timeout period = 2 minutes, calling interval = 5 seconds)
The reset ioctl will work under such setting.
If a timeout still occurs before a reset, it would imply that an unexpected
problem (e.g. deadlock) occur in an application.